1.  Greek & Latin Roots:  Auto = self  Bio = life  Graph = write  Therefore, autobiography =

2.  An autobiography is a writing about one’s own life.  Bonus: What is the paradox or irony in the title?  What other movies or songs do you know that are autobiographical?

3.  Eminem’s “The Way I Am” or his movie Eight Mile  Kid Rock’s “Only God Knows Why”  The Pursuit of Happyness

4.  An autobiography is also called a “memoir.”  What word root do you recognize in that word?

5.  Predict what you think the title indicates.  What is ironic in the preface about his friend’s response, “Cool”?  What country is he from?  What kinds of memories does he have about his country? Support with evidence from the text.

6.  Why are the children of refugees jumpy at loud sounds?  Why does the narrator think the refugees are exaggerating the stories?  What is a refugee?  What are “crapes”?

7.  What happens to his family while he is in Mattru Jong?  Why is he in Mattru Jong, instead of home?  Who is ruining his relationship with his father? Why?  Why don’t the narrator and his friends go all the way home?  Why are people still holding onto corpses?

8.  The narrator says he can “no longer tell the difference between dream and reality” (15). Is he crazy?  Why does he suddenly want to think about a time before the war with his grandmother?  What does the father mean when he tells Ishmael that Ishmael was a “negative nineteen years old”? (14)  What is ironic about calling this war a “liberation of the people”? (14)  What is the event on pp. 18-19 with the corpse?  When on the timeline does ch. 2 occur? (LOOK FOR CLUES.)  How is he living in “three worlds”? (20)